WASHINGTON President-elect Donald Trump's pledge to withdraw from a Pacific trade pact and revise a two-decade-old trade agreement with Mexico and Canada has won praise from working-class people in Ohio who supported him, even as many economists fear the moves could lead to an economic recession.

Trump, who during the campaign assailed the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement as costing tens of thousands of jobs, struck a chord with blue-collar workers scattered throughout the Midwest by insisting he will take a tough line against international trade and brings jobs back to the United States.

In a video released Monday, Trump called the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a free-trade agreement between the United States and 11 other Pacific-rim countries — a "potential disaster for our country." He pledged instead to "negotiate fair, bilateral trade deals that will bring jobs and industry back on to American shores."

But those applause-winning lines could become an economic nightmare if international trade slows. Economists worry that a major trade war could raise prices on such consumer products as cars, flat-screen TVs and home appliances, and also tip the economy into a recession that could throw people out of work.

"I understand it's pandering to populist and progressive interest groups, but I hope we all enjoy the resulting recession," said Edward Hill, a professor of economic development policy at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at Ohio State University.

Mark Muro, a senior fellow and policy Director at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said, "It is a cruel joke to tell workers who lost their job in manufacturing that if we make a few adjustments on some trade agreements, lots of jobs will be returned in manufacturing."

"Both parties have somewhat romanticized the manufacturing economy and made out-sized promises for it," Muro said. "Manufacturing is absolutely critical to America. It encompasses some of the most exciting innovation that we have, but it is simply not going to resemble your parents' shop floor with 5,000 workers."

Even critics of NAFTA and the Pacific pact, such as Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, acknowledge it will be difficult for Trump to lure many jobs back.

"The path of trade over the past two decades has cost jobs, and particularly in Ohio and other states like that," Baker said. "Some number will come back. (But) the idea we're going to get all those jobs back is unlikely."

Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton by winning Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all of which saw manufacturing jobs swept away through a combination of automation, international trade competition, the strong dollar and high labor costs.

Network exit polls showed that nationally, 38 percent of voters said trade creates jobs while 42 percent said it takes jobs away. But 48 percent of Ohio voters said trade destroys jobs and 69 percent of those voted for Trump. In Michigan, 50 percent of voters said trade is a job-killer and 58 percent of those respondents supported Trump.

Millions of well-paying manufacturing jobs have vanished during the past 15 years, but economists sharply disagree on whether to blame international trade or the rapid increases in productivity that allow American companies to produce more products with fewer workers.

Automation plays huge role

There are roughly 12 million manufacturing jobs in the United States today compared to 19 million in 1979. Yet even as companies have shed workers during the past three decades, U.S. industrial output has dramatically increased, and the country's manufacturing output is second only to China and larger than the combined outputs of Germany and Japan.

Muro calculates it took 25 jobs in 1980 to produce $1 million in manufacturing output compared to six jobs today. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects manufacturing jobs will continue to decline during the next decade even as the economy adds 10 million new jobs.

Ohio, often portrayed as the center of the Rust Belt and littered with abandoned factories, has increased its gross domestic product measured in 2015 dollars from $480 billion in 1997 to $608 billion today.

"It's automation, and if we didn't automate, the American consumer would vote with their feet and buy this stuff elsewhere," Hill said. "If you want to bring back American manufacturing to the efficiencies and technologies of 1970, try it."

Yet Baker countered by saying, "We've had technology and productivity improvements forever," adding there was relatively little change in the number of manufacturing jobs from 1970 through 2000.

But following China's admission to the World Trade Organization and full implementation of NAFTA, jobs began to vanish, prompting Baker to assert it is "extremely misleading" to say automation caused the job losses.

If Trump's demands for major changes in NAFTA provoke a trade war with Mexico and Canada, Ohio's economy would be affected. Because NAFTA created a unified supply chain in the auto industry, Ohio's two largest trading partners are its North American neighbors.

In 2015, Ohio companies and farmers exported $51.9 billion worth of goods, more than double what the state exported in 2000. State officials say 260,000 jobs in Ohio depend on exports, which include industrial machinery, computers, vehicles, automotive parts and aircraft.

"There is no doubt Trump is speaking to very real pain," Muro said. "The question is the relevance about the prescribed solution.

"I think a significant problem, even if you were to manage to bring home significantly more manufacturing, you won't necessarily bring home that many jobs or nearly as many jobs as you would have 20 years ago," Muro said. "That's a problem, really, for everyone. It means U.S. manufacturing is more competitive than it was a decade ago, but it is a far less populous job creator."

To solve the problem, Muro said, "workers will need to obtain very serious, high-quality, fundamental retraining. To even stay in manufacturing is going to require a degree of digital skills."

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